Wisdom Exchange

Finding friends of virtue to build better communities

Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash

Peter Limberg has written a brilliant, five-part series on “terrible communities.” In it he highlights several ways human beings deceive themselves when they form collectives. I highly recommend familiarizing yourself with these phenomena and examining how they may apply to the communities you currently find yourself in. I recently did and these are the conclusions I made.

Complex thinking does not equal maturity. Just because someone can organize complex ideas into coherent patterns and reach conclusions, does not mean that they are able to respond to what the situation requires. In fact, I have found that some of the most brilliant minds are often the most egotistical because intellectual intelligence can lead to overconfidence, that is, a feeling of being the smartest person in the room. Too much confidence can result in hubris if it is not tempered by humility because in truth we do not know what we do not know.

Maturity does not equal wisdom. Peter Limberg addresses this premise throughout his Substack, Less Foolish. Just because we are well-adjusted to society does not mean we are able to identify universal patterns of existence. In fact, the opposite may be true. The more we are entrained in the common, collective narrative, the more likely we are to “fit in”. This is the basis of brain washing. While we may be mature enough to gracefully co-exist with others, we may just as easily be guided foolishly off the cliff.

Speaking wisdom does not equal being wise. This last observation is probably the most important one to remember, especially for those of us who tend to be drawn to “we spaces”, both on and offline. Our current era is filled with opportunities to connect with like-minded people, hungering for some kind of inspiration and connection. Coaches, workshops, and festivals that are based on the human potential movement are hugely popular these days. When we enter into these temporary or permanent relationships, we are very susceptible to projecting our desire for wise men and women to guide us toward our salvation in every sense of the word. In doing so, we may overlook that these people are not actually wise. Instead they are acting wise on account of sharing some common wisdom. Being wise is something entirely different.

Being wise means that our inner reactivity has been transmuted into virtue through the cultivation of awareness or Presence. For example, pride becomes humility, deceit becomes authenticity, fear becomes courage and so forth. In essence, cold heartedness becomes tender heartedness. If we understand this, then we can be on the lookout for duplicity and ask ourselves, “do words and actions line up?”

Wise people embody immediacy. They say what they mean and mean what they say. More significantly, they are responsible, which implies they are able to respond to what the situation requires. This is important. In this time of transition and immense confusion, when many of us are hungry for wisdom, there will be people who are complex thinkers and well-adjusted. They will captivate us with their wisdom. However, many of them are not wise. So we must cultivate ways to resist the temptation to hand our inner authority over to them by cultivating our sovereignty in relationship to others through proper relatedness.

In Wise as Serpents, Peter Limberg proposes that we:

1. Develop the capacity and orientation to be engaged in I-Thou ways of relating,

2. Create the social container that has the conditions for I-Thou ways of relating to emerge,

3. Have wise serpents serving as “spiritual bouncers,” protecting the perimeters of social fields that attempt I-Thou ways of relating, allowing only those with the proper capacity and orientation into the field. 

In other words, being able to discern whether or not someone can be entrusted is not only good for our mental health and well-being but is also good for collective sense making. This is where friends of virtue come in.

Friends of virtue must be wise serpents, keeping the foolish and evil serpents at bay and allowing I-Thou relationships to blossom and flourish.

I am finding those friends and we just may be birthing a community where wisdom can be safely cultivated and freely exchanged. In this new year, I hope the same for you.